Sustainable food

· Sustainable food production and supply (led by BBSRC, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Department for International Development (DFID) and the Scottish Government) - to include: crop and livestock production, aquaculture, food processing, manufacture and transport.

· Resource efficiency (led by NERC, with Defra) - to include: land use and soils, greenhouse gas emissions, waste, energy, water and nutrients

· Sustainable, healthy, safe diets (led by MRC and the Food Standards Agency (FSA)) – to include food safety throughout the supply chain, nutrition, consumer behaviour, food choice and accessibility

· Economic resilience (led by ESRC; with BIS) to include global trade, food market economics, economic impact of food safety issues, competitiveness of farming and food businesses

10. The GFS programme includes five Research Councils working in partnership with relevant Government departments, agencies, and the devolved administrations. It builds on the activities of each of the funding partners and aims to add value to their investments. It is intended to bring additional coherence by acting as a focus for joint activities and alignment of their individual activities with shared goals.

11. The GFS programme will provide added value through:

· improved cohesion between funders in this area – including sharing of views and strategy development at early stages, and improved awareness of one another’s strategies and priorities. This follows the model provided by the Living With Environmental Change [7] programme which includes a similar range of funders and engenders the principle of co-design, co-production and co-delivery to ensure that the evidence produced meets the needs of policymakers and other users.

· providing leadership – helping to build a more integrated community of researchers and users; acting as a focal point for the diverse research communities, industry, politicians and policy-makers; helping to maximise the value and impact of food security research across government, and to make a strong case for that investment; providing a platform to lever greater contribution of funding from the private sector and from international partner organisations.

· increased impact - through better coordinated and more effective dialogue with and stronger links to wider stakeholders/users (such as agriculture and other industrial sectors, policy makers, civil society organisations and the public); increased UK interactions internationally; linking research priorities and outcomes better to the development agenda, G8 commitments and Millennium Development Goals; a more coherent UK approach to the EU food security agenda; increasing the impact of research findings in public policy including regulatory frameworks; use of appropriate mechanisms for evaluation of the success of the programme.

· increased innovation - through new knowledge leading to new products, processes and policy/regulatory approaches that support and encourage innovation, as well as through novel interdisciplinary approaches to address the challenges of delivering sustainable future food systems. This will include protecting and respecting intellectual property rights to encourage innovation and investment in research.

· improved horizon scanning and foresight - to identify and respond to emerging priorities, for example by joint analyses and exploiting opportunities to recognise and address gaps and weaknesses in research, skills and facilities.

Other relevant cross-Research Council programmes

12. Working in partnership, UK Research Councils and Government departments co-deliver a number of other programmes that will help to inform sustainable food production, for example:

· Living With Environmental Change (LWEC) [8] – A major partnership of 22 organisations across the Research Councils, Government departments and agencies. Under the auspices of LWEC, notable investments of relevance include the Insect Pollinators Initiative (2009, £10M), funded by BBSRC, NERC, Defra, the Scottish Government and the Wellcome Trust to provide an evidence base to inform the conservation of wild insect pollinators and to improve the husbandry of managed species, in order to avoid the potentially catastrophic loss of the ecosystem services they provide.

· Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) [9] – Partnership between DFID, NERC, ESRC. This multidisciplinary £40.5m research programme aims to deliver high quality and cutting-edge research that will deliver improved understanding of how ecosystems function, the services they provide, the full value of these services, and their potential role in achieving sustainable poverty reduction. ESPA research will provide the evidence and tools to enable decision-makers and end-users to manage ecosystems sustainably and in a way that contributes to poverty reduction.

· Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) [10] – Partnership between ESRC, NERC, BBSRC, Scottish Government, Defra. The £24M Rural Economy and Land Use9 programme is helping us to understand the social, economic, environmental and technological challenges that rural areas face. Its interdisciplinary research is informing policymakers' choices about how to manage the countryside and rural economies, including in relation to production and supply of sustainable food. It also aims to encourage the social and economic vitality of rural areas, and promote protection and conservation of rural environments.